The present invention concerns a motor vehicle headlight.
The present invention concerns more particularly a motor vehicle headlight which is designed to produce at least one regulatory principal lighting beam with cutoff, in particular of the dipped headlight type, comprising, arranged from rear to front roughly along a longitudinal optical axis, a reflector of the elliptical type, a principal light source which is arranged in the vicinity of a first focus of the reflector, a shield which comprises a cutoff edge arranged in the vicinity of a second focus of the reflector, so as to form the cutoff in the principal lighting beam produced by the headlight, and a principal convergent lens, a focal plane of which passes close to the second focus of the reflector, a second light source being arranged between the shield and the principal lens.
Vehicles must now be equipped with lighting systems capable of fulfilling many lighting functions, each being adapted to particular traffic conditions.
One significant difficulty, in the integration of all these lighting functions in a vehicle, is the size of the headlights which are necessary for fulfilling all these functions. In particular, there is a need for increasing the number of lighting functions fulfilled by a headlight without increasing the apparent surface area of this headlight in the front face of the vehicle.
The invention aims to remedy this drawback by proposing a simple, economical and effective solution.
To this end, the invention proposes a motor vehicle headlight which is designed to produce at least one regulatory principal lighting beam with cutoff, in particular of the dipped headlight type, comprising, arranged from rear to front roughly along a longitudinal optical axis, a reflector of the elliptical type, a principal light source which is arranged in the vicinity of a first focus of the reflector, a shield which comprises a cutoff edge arranged in the vicinity of a second focus of the reflector, so as to form the cutoff in the principal lighting beam produced by the headlight, and a principal convergent lens, a focal plane of which passes close to the second focus of the reflector, a secondary light source being arranged between the shield and the principal lens, characterised in that it comprises an optical distribution element which is arranged in front of the shield, so as to distribute the light rays emitted by the secondary source on the input surface of the principal lens, with a view to producing a secondary lighting beam, the secondary source being arranged outside the path of the light rays coming from the principal source and directed towards the input surface of the principal lens.
According to other characteristics of the invention:
the optical distribution element is arranged in the vicinity of the focus of the principal lens;
the optical distribution element comprises a support provided with an anisotropic coating which diffuses in a controlled manner the light energy received from the secondary source towards the input surface of the principal lens;
the anisotropic coating comprises a network of elementary diffusion patterns produced in isotropic material;
the optical distribution element comprises a mirror;
the optical distribution element comprises a hologram forming a mirror;
the optical distribution element is carried by the front face of the shield;
the portion of the shield carrying the optical distribution element has a curved profile, in a longitudinal vertical plane, with a view to distributing the light rays emitted by the secondary source on the input surface of the principal lens;
the secondary source comprises an optical concentration element, so as to concentrate the light rays emitted by the secondary source on the optical distribution element;
the optical concentration element comprises a secondary convergent lens;
the optical concentration element comprises a hologram;
the secondary source is a laser diode which produces an infrared lighting beam.